6 trends for 2026: Stablecoins, payments, and real-world assets

This entire week, we’re running our observations on what’s ahead this year… stay tuned here, and be sure to also subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more trend updates, industry reports, builder guides, news analysis, and other resources.

1. We’ll see better, more clever onramps for stablecoins this year

Stablecoins accounted for an estimated 46 trillion dollars in transaction volume last year, constantly hitting new all time highs. To put that into perspective: That’s more than 20x the volume of PayPal; close to 3x the volume of Visa (one of the largest payment networks in the world); and rapidly approaches the volume of ACH, the electronic network for financial transactions in the United States.

Today, you can send a stablecoin in less than a second for less than a cent. What remains unsolved, however, is how to connect these digital dollars to the financial rails people actually use already every day — in other words, on/offramps for stablecoins.

A new generation of startups is filling this gap, linking stablecoins to more familiar payment systems and local currencies. Some use cryptographic proofs to let people privately swap local balances for digital dollars. Some integrate with regional networks that draw on QR codes, real-time payments rails, and other features to enable bank-to-bank payments… While others are building more truly interoperable global wallet layers and card-issuing platforms that let users spend stablecoins at everyday merchants.

Together, these approaches broaden who can participate in the digital dollar economy — and could accelerate stablecoins being used more directly as mainstream payments.

As these on/off ramps mature, with digital dollars plugging directly into local payment systems and merchant tools, new behaviors will emerge. Workers can be paid in real time across borders. Merchants can accept global dollars without bank accounts. Apps can settle value instantly with users anywhere. Stablecoins will fundamentally shift from a niche financial tool to the foundational settlement layer for the internet.

~Jeremy Zhang, a16z crypto engineering partner

2. Banks will unlock new payment scenarios this year

The average bank is running software that is unrecognizable to modern developers: In the 1960s and 1970s, banks were early adopters of large software systems. The second generation of core banking software started in the 1980s and 1990s (for instance, via Temenos’ GLOBUS and InfoSys’ Finacle). But all this software has been aging, and is being upgraded too slowly. As such, the banking industry — especially critical core ledgers, the key databases that track deposits, collateral, and other obligations — still often run on mainframe computers, programmed with COBOL, and with batch file interfaces instead of APIs.

The large majority of global assets live on those same core ledgers that are also decades old. While these systems are battle tested, trusted by regulators, and deeply integrated into complex banking scenarios, they are also holding back innovation. Adding key functionality like realtime payments (RTP) can take months or more likely years, and requires navigating layers of technical debt and regulatory complexity.

That’s where stablecoins come in. Not only were the last couple years when stablecoins found product-market fit and hit the mainstream, but this year, TradFi institutions embraced them at a whole new level. Stablecoins, tokenized deposits, tokenized treasuries, and onchain bonds allow banks, fintechs, and financial institutions to build new products and serve new customers. More importantly, they can do this without forcing these organizations to rewrite their legacy systems — systems that, while aging, have run reliably for decades. Stablecoins thus provide a new way for institutions to innovate.

~Sam Broner

3. We’ll see more origination, not just tokenization, of stablecoins 

This year, we’ll see more “origination, not just tokenization” when it comes to stablecoins, which went mainstream last year; outstanding stablecoin issuance continues to grow.

But stablecoins without strong credit infrastructure look like narrow banks, which hold specific liquid assets that are considered extra-safe. While narrow banking is a valid product, I don’t believe it will be the backbone of the onchain economy in the long term.

We’ve seen a number of new asset managers, curators, and protocols start to facilitate onchain asset-backed lending against offchain collateral. Often these loans originate offchain and then are tokenized. I think tokenization offers few benefits here, other than perhaps distributed to users that are already onchain. That’s why debt assets should be originated on chain, not originated off chain and tokenized.

Origination onchain reduces loan servicing costs, back office structuring costs, and increases accessibility. The challenging part here will be compliance and standardization, but builders are already working on solving those problems.

~Guy Wuollet, a16z crypto general partner

4. We’ll see more real-world asset tokenization… but in a crypto-native way

Last year, we saw strong interest from banks, fintechs, and asset managers in bringing U.S. equities, commodities, indices, and other traditional assets onchain. As more traditional assets come onchain, however, the tokenization is often skeuomorphic — rooted in the current idea of real-world assets, and not taking advantage of crypto-native features.

But synthetic representations like perpetual futures (perps) allow deeper liquidity and are often simpler to implement. Perps also provide easy-to-understand leverage, so I believe they are the crypto-native derivative with the strongest product-market fit. I also believe that emerging market equities are one of the most interesting asset classes to perpify. (The zero-days-to-expiration or 0DTE options market for some equities often trades with deeper liquidity than the spot market, and would be a fascinating experiment for perpification.)

It all comes down to the question of “perpification vs. tokenization”; but either way, we should see more crypto-native RWA tokenization this year.

~Guy Wuollet, a16z crypto general partner

5. More people (not just high net-worth clients) will be able to access wealth management 

Personalized wealth management services have traditionally been reserved for high net-worth clients at banks: It’s expensive and operationally complex to deliver tailored advice, and personalize a portfolio, across asset classes. But as more asset classes are tokenized, crypto rails enable strategies — personalized with AI recommendations and co-pilots — to be executed and rebalanced instantly and with minimal cost.

This is more than just robo advisors; everyone can access active portfolio management, not just passive management. In 2025, TradFi increased its allocation of portfolio exposure to crypto (either directly or via ETPs), but that was just the beginning; in 2026, we’ll see platforms built for “wealth accumulation” — not just “wealth preservation” — as fintechs (like Revolut and Robinhood) and centralized exchanges (like Coinbase) leverage their tech stack lead to own more of this market.

Meanwhile, DeFi tools like Morpho Vaults automatically allocate assets into lending markets with the best risk-adjusted yield — providing a core yield-bearing allocation in a portfolio. Holding remaining liquid balances in stablecoins rather than in fiat, and in tokenized money market funds rather than traditional money market funds, expands the possibilities for further yield.

Finally, retail investors now have easier access to more illiquid private market assets such as private credit, pre-IPO companies, and private equity, as tokenization helps unlock these markets while still maintaining compliance and reporting requirements. As the various components of a balanced portfolio become tokenized (moving along the risk spectrum from bonds to stocks to privates and alts), they can be automatically rebalanced without having to do wire transfers and more.

~Maggie Hsu, a16z crypto go-to-market partner

6. The internet won’t just support finance, but become the bank

As agents arrive en masse, and more commerce happens automatically in the background rather than through user clicks, then the way money — value! — moves needs to change.

In a world where systems act on intent instead of on step-by-step instructions — moving money because an AI agent recognized a need, fulfilled an obligation, or triggered an outcome — value has to travel as fast and freely as information does today. This is where blockchains, smart contracts, and new protocols come in.

A smart contract can already settle a dollar payment globally in seconds. But, in 2026, emerging primitives like x402 make that settlement programmable and reactive: Agents paying each other for data, GPU time, or API calls instantly and permissionlessly — without invoicing, reconciling, or batching. Developers shipping software updates that come bundled with built-in payment rules, limits, and audit trails — without fiat integrations, merchant onboarding, banks. Prediction markets that self-settle in real time as events unfold — where odds update, agents trade, and payouts clear globally in seconds… without a custodian or exchange.

Once value can move this way, the “payment flow” stops being a separate operational layer and becomes a network behavior: Banks become part of the internet’s basic plumbing, assets become infrastructure. If money becomes a packet the internet can route, then the internet doesn’t just support the financial system… it becomes the financial system.

~Christian Crowley and Pyrs Carvolth, a16z crypto go-to-market partners

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